Four years ago when I began to draft what would eventually become The Voyage of the Pleiades, my protagonist appeared. Her voice was and is, the starting point for our story. It took years to refine Linnea, but her essence was set in those first pages. One of the most frequent questions asked of authors is where their characters come from: are they fashioned on themselves, on people they know? I’m not sure how to accurately answer that question. My characters exist in my imagination, but they are also an amalgamation of people I’ve read about, or known. There is a piece of me in every one of them. In November, I had the amazing opportunity to participate in a discussion with
Sometimes it seems as if fiction writers almost channel voices of history, pull them from another realm. They really do take on their own life and have their own kind of agency. They tell the writer what their next move or line will be. I'm thinking of the work of Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead for example. The ghosts of history speaking back to us.
Sometimes it seems as if fiction writers almost channel voices of history, pull them from another realm. They really do take on their own life and have their own kind of agency. They tell the writer what their next move or line will be. I'm thinking of the work of Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead for example. The ghosts of history speaking back to us.